


Mother is the Name for God

by thesleepingsatellite



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Mental Anguish, Missing Scene, Motherhood, Nighttime, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-22 14:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12484196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/pseuds/thesleepingsatellite
Summary: Janine always was a night creature.





	Mother is the Name for God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FreshBrains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/gifts).



She lies in bed, white knuckled fingers clenching the edge of the blanket, drawn to just below her eyes. She peers into the darkness of the room they put her in. It isn’t her room, it’s just an empty space. Her room is blocks away, in a house larger and grander than this one. Her room is down the hall from her baby’s, so that if her baby needs her, Janine will be right there. Right there to help if Charlotte needs her.

Her baby needs her now, Janine knows it as surely as she knows that this world is damned, and Janine isn’t there to hold her baby. She’s here in this forlorn house with tepid people she doesn’t know, and there is no baby here. There is no soft, squishy little body to hold against her. Here, there are no dimpled hands reaching for her, no blue eyes to look at her with adoration, no happy little grunts from a nursing infant. There is no little person whose only wish is for Janine to hold her close, to nurse her and to never, ever let her go. 

She’d let go. She’d let them take her baby out of her arms. Her baby. _Hers._

She hates herself for it. 

Janine feels like screaming, opening her mouth to howl loud and long, but knows that if she does she’ll be punished, perhaps even sent away to the Colonies, and then she’d never Charlotte again. She can talk to herself in the darkness of her room night, and so she does.

“I’m sorry,” Janine gasps, her voice muffled under the blankets. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry-“ 

Her breath comes fast and short, and she becomes lightheaded. 

She lowers the blanket so she can inhale the cool air of the room. She scratches at her side, her fingernails clawing at her flesh. She can still feel the new Commander’s touch on her, and hours later her skin still crawls from his touch, so tentative and unsure. Not like Warren’s. Warren had promised her, he’d promised her that they would be a family. Alone, in the dim night of his study he’d held her close while she was with-child and told her that they would leave this town, travel somewhere that no-one would know them, and it would be just the three of them: Janine, Warren and the baby. 

_Liar_ , she thinks venomously. _Liar_. 

She is alone – she has never been more alone – and her baby is in another woman’s arms. This knowledge and the physical separation from her child are unbearable, creating a pain that is almost physical. She feels it in the staccato beat of her heart, in the ache in her throat, in the throbbing pain behind her remaining eye. She feels it deeply in her empty eye socket, and in the new, oozing red welts she’d scratched onto her hip. If only she could take Charlotte and go someplace where they would be free, perhaps she could be happy. Perhaps her miserable existence would be worthwhile.

She throws back her blankets with a gasp and shivers when the cold air hits her body.

There is nothing stopping her. The night is dark, and the cellar door at the Putman’s house – an hour’s walk away – is never locked.

She slips out of bed, and slides her thick woolen socks onto her feet and over her calves before setting her toes to the cold hardwood floor. In the dark, she opens the closet and retrieves one of the many red dresses before slipping it on. Silently, on her tip toes, she makes her way downstairs. She isn’t allowed a clock, so she doesn’t know what time it is, but she does know that she had lain awake, eyes wide open, for hours after the house went quiet. It is the dead of night, and no-one is awake save for her.

Janine always was a night creature. 

“Just you wait, little baby,” Janine says quietly as she closes the back door behind her. “Mama’s coming for you.”


End file.
